Hardly a day goes by without a client, former client, or former friend of a friend of a client asking me to vote for them in a so-called “contest.”

It seems they’ve been nominated for “best new website design for a company with less than $100 in revenues” or “best new book” and they need to get as many votes as possible so they can win a button to put on their website.

While I might like to help friends of friends of friends of people I don’t really know, I have to draw the line somewhere.

Here’s why I won’t vote for you.

1.     It’s a stupid award. What are you going to do with the award it if you win? Place a button your site saying you won Best Website Design of the week from fly-by-night.org?
2.     You’re competing against every other person the contest connived into balloting, so what chance do you really have? You might be better off spending a dollar on your state lottery. You might have better odds there.

3.     You do realize this is just a publicity stunt to get new eyeballs to view the contest provider’s site, don’t you? This promotion has absolutely nothing to do with helping you market anything.

4.     You’re destroying your brand value with me. I lose an amount of trust and respect for you because you aren’t doing anything to help me. It’s all about you. That’s not a fair trade.

Of course, I do believe in karma and law of attraction and what goes around will come around. But I consider asking for votes in a bogus contest to be a form of spam. And I’d rather not have that come around. So I’m stopping it dead in its tracks right now.  Please don’t enable the spammers.